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My first IT jobs were help desk. After taking classes at FVTC, I got to help the DBA write reports. I was very interested in SQL Server and database development, but I knew I didn’t know much. I wanted to attend a training class or a conference. In 2010, I had the opportunity to attend SQLSaturday #31, Chicago. My company paid for two nights of hotel and mileage. Later in the year, I asked to attend PASS Summit. I was told I wasn’t allowed to attend because I’d already used my training for the year, and there was no budget for it. I was livid, because I’d attended on a non-work day, and I hadn’t been told it would be my only training option for the year. I decided that would never happen again – I was taking charge of my career and professional development.

I’ve come to understand that training and development have two pieces: time, and money. There are ways to work around both of these constraints. If your company won’t send you to a conference, send you to a week of training, pay for an exam book, or provide leadership training, here is what you can do to better yourself.

Make time for learning, and put a priority on it. There are many things in life that can consume our time. We have families. We have to work to support ourselves and them. We have hobbies. You need to prioritize your time. I used to wake up early and spend 30 minutes reading from one of my SQL books while I drink my morning coffee. You could read at lunch time, or in the evening before bed.

Yes, in the short term, this takes away from “me” time, or family time. But the dividends you will earn in your career later will make it worth it!

Start saving money to send yourself to training. I did. After I attended that SQLSaturday, I realized how valuable attending more training would be. When my request to go to PASS Summit was I denied, I figured out how much I would need to save per month to be able to register in time for the early-bird discount the following year, and I started saving. Yes, this meant that money didn’t go to other things. But it was a sacrifice I made to improve my career. The money I invested in myself all those years ago has paid dividends many times over.

(It turns out I didn’t have to use that money for the next PASS Summit. I got a different job in the meantime, which offered a week of training, so it was paid for. Instead, I used my savings to travel to more SQLSaturdays and chapters. I still keep a small reserve in case there is an event I want to go to.)

Bring training to the company. That’s right. This is especially helpful if you have management that doesn’t see the value in their employees getting paid to learn. Start a regular brown-bag-lunch-and-learn series. Give a talk. Ask your coworkers to give a talk. Watch a free webinar. Watch a recording. Let people ask questions and talk among themselves after. Ask how you can apply it to your company. Then, start applying those lessons. Don’t do this once and hope it works – do it regularly. Once a month, or once a week – whatever your schedule allows. After your leadership sees the effort you are putting in, and the positive effect it has on the company, they may be more willing to invest in outside resources.

After you’ve invested your time and money into learning more, if you want your company to support you, you have to show them how it is helping. Solve a long-standing problem. Implement a new technology. Pass an exam. If the company still won’t support you, it’s time to leave. The classic question comes to mind: “What if we invest in our employees and they leave?” and the answer is, “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?” It may be time to look for a different job with a different company, and during negotiations, ensure they support your career development with time and money.

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About the Author

Jes Borland is a Senior SQL Engineer at Concurrency and a Microsoft Data Platform MVP. She holds an AAS - Programmer/Analyst degree and has worked with SQL Server as a developer, report writer, DBA, and consultant. She is a user group founder, a blogger, and a frequent speaker. In her free time, she runs, cycles, and cooks.

8 Comments

I couldn’t agree more about making time to learn. As an independent consultant I have had the ability to take education costs from my taxes. I realized many years ago that PASS Summit was a great chance to learn and with Seattle being close to Edmonton, Albert, CANADA it isn’t too difficult to get to. The Canadian dollar being at least close to the US dollar exchange also made it easier but I spread the Summit cost over a number of months, early-bird conference followed by flights followed by hotel so it wasn’t a big hit at once. The early-bird rate along with alumni discount brings that down even more. I knew I was learning when my fellow DBA’s weren’t there.
As you remember, I went on my first SQLCruise this year and this is even more of a cost but WAS IT WORTH IT!!! I learned stuff from experts and now have both contacts and lasting friendships.

Jes, these are fantastic ideas. I especially like the suggestion to bring training to the company. Not only does this increase one’s value to the company, but could also help sway the decision toward the company paying to train the trainer.

Great thoughts Jes!! This is a topic very close my me as someone who has self funded herself many times…am working harder on staying up wiht pluralsight, mva etc too (I would add many ohter sites like udemy, udacity,coursera to that list). In my experience – big companies have a training budget usually, and dont have issues with it..or if you are a consultant they see some marketing value in sending you..without either of those it is pretty hard to sell a conference to smaller/medium companies esp if there are tons of others who have never gone to a training before. We got pluralsight where i work this year, i consider that a ‘win’. One step at a time, and glad i learned the lesson early that it is an investment in yourself.

Somehow the programmers get paid training even if it’s not related (some I think had two weeks per year–seems suspicious that they might have used my week?), but not us in the admin group. They said to send the info, which I did and then I hear nothing. Years ago when we did training, my boss would fall asleep. Today, the only words out of his mouth are that he wants to retire. So, I constantly have to train him and remind him of things.

I resorted to training myself at work, which is on demand through google searching. Sometimes I buy books to try to stay up to date on the newer versions of SQL Server.

In companies which have rules about training, and in addition to the time and money equation, it is worthwile to study:
– at which date the training budget is allocated and by which date it must be utilized to justify the amounts for the next year. There are opportunity windows sometimes;
– if there are different policies about training, accomodation and travel; working with the training provider to see if your company could get billed following the rules your accounting department expects may let you attend trainings you could only dream of if you play by the book.